Rising/Falling Action, LM

Rising Action:

The sun came up and when my alarm went off at 9:30, I rolled out of bed. I was both scared and confident at the same time. It’s a feeling like drinking a combination of chocolate milk and orange juice—it just doesn’t sit well. I arrived at my exam room 10 minutes early. My heartbeat increased more and more with each second moving closer to 10am. Tick, tock, tick, tock. I was watching the clock projected on the screen at the front of the room. When the clock struck 10:00, the teaching assistants passed out the exam. My heart was racing, palms were sweating, and nerves were wracking. I was prepared. I was ready for this. Twelve problems, no big deal. I flipped it over to begin. I panicked instantly. There were four more problems than I had expected. Why would the teacher do that to me? “Alright. Calm down, Jesse, you’ll be fine,” I thought.

I made it through the first five problems in 30 minutes. I was making good time and was on track to finish early. I got to the next problem and froze. All I could do was stare at the paper, full of words that looked like a foreign language to me. “No problem,” I thought, “just move to the next one and come back later.” However, the next problem looked just as foreign. Now it was getting more serious. I’ll just move onto the next one. This became a pattern. A paradox where my mind knew how to do these problems, but on the testing day, it didn’t. The next hour and a half resembled an exam from hell. I had calmly made it through the first few problems and then suddenly I did not know what I was doing at all. My blood pressure was through the roof until the two hours were over. By the time I turned in my exam, I had pulled enough hair off my head to create a small cat. What on earth just happened to me?

Falling Action:

          There was no way I was going to let this happen on my other exams. I put away my video games, distanced myself from Duke and his distractions, and moved to a quiet space. Every moment I wasn’t taking an exam, sleeping, or eating, I was studying. The following two days were successful. I didn’t bomb anymore exams and made it through finals week with little disappointment. I was very proud with the recovery that I had made, yet I was still dissatisfied with my Calculus exam.